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Full transcript:
Speaker 1:
Well, hello there, health coaches, thank you so much for joining me. I was thinking this week about what topic I wanted to bring to the show. You guys know that I love responding to topics and questions and things that come up inside our Facebook group, right? That's like where I'm usually going for, I don't even want to say inspiration, but just knowing what you all need because you tell me it's beautiful. But rather than streaming the entire live streaming episode like I usually do, I've decided today to highlight a situation that came up last week inside of live coaching call with my H P U members. I think this is going to really hit home for many of you. We were discussing what to do when a client goes radio silent. They've paid, they've shown up for a session or two, you're following up with them, and then it's just like nothing.
Just no communication. They ghost. This is never a good feeling, but as you're going to see, it's definitely a learning experience. Before we get into all of that, I want to give a shout out to J m m Soer who left this five star review on Apple Podcast, and here's what he or she had to say, a must listen for new aspiring health coaches. I recently completed my i n certification and gut health specialization, but after all that training, I still feel completely inadequate to be a health coach and I'm suffering from imposter syndrome. I found Michelle's podcast online, so I started listening and then I joined her Facebook group. Michelle speaks with authority and from experience, but she does so in a way that is practical and immediately us usable by people new to the profession. She breaks down concepts into bite-size pieces and gives actionable advice that is generally applicable to all listeners, but it's almost like she's telling it specifically to me.
All new and aspiring coaches should listen to Michelle's podcast. Wow. Thank you so much j m m Summer. I'm thrilled, first of all to hear that you're listening and you're getting actionable advice that you can actually use to move your business forward. Yes, that's like a huge win, and your review absolutely means the world, because this is how we get the show in front of more health coaches, many of whom were really struggling and need this kind of support. So if you could, JM Soer, J M M Soer, please send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com because we have little thank you gift to send your way. And for everybody listening, please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. And who knows, maybe I'll read yours on the air next time. All right, let's get back into this idea of getting ghosted. Now, this has happened to me several times in my health coaching career.
I'm going back a number of years and kind of digging through my memory, but I thought of two clients where this happened. One was a woman who clearly wanted me to put, she wanted me to put her on a diet, like a calorie restricted diet. That's what she had always done. That's what she was expecting. And no matter how much I tried to coach her through, she was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, can you just tell me what to eat? It was a little bit tricky because she was my neighbor's sister. So there was a personal connection, and in all, it was just not a good fit. Another was kind of similar. I remember she wanted to know exactly how much dark chocolate she should eat at night, how much was okay. She wanted me to approve her chocolate consumption. Now, of course, I was not going to tell her that she could eat a certain what number of ounces of chocolate, and she didn't like that.
She was another one of these. I just wanted you to tell me what to eat. When I suggested, because she was looking for something as a treat in the evening when she got home from a long day of work, I suggested some non-food forms of self-care. I remember I suggested taking a bath, a bubble bath, and she laughed at me, laughed at me. It was mortifying. Both of these clients disappeared after the first couple of sessions, and I learned that I needed to be more selective in who I took on as clients. I needed my marketing to also better represent the work that I did. I think this was a real sticking point because rather than just saying that I was a nutrition coach, I was a health coach, whatever, that was setting me up for these clients who wanted a nutrition plan to follow.
By the way, speaking of marketing, because marketing is so much more than hanging a flyer of having a business card, it really does start to dictate the type of people that are in your world, the type of people who become your clients. So speaking of all of that, my 2023 fast track semester is happening this spring. It's my most robust marketing training. We do it live just one time a year. So we're getting revved up and ready to go with that. If you're interested and you want access to the best possible bonus package, this is your heads up. I'm going to have the wait list open in the next week or so. I know I keep talking about it. It's coming. It's coming. It really is coming this time. So keep your eyes open in about a week, we'll have that ready for you. And in the meantime, let's get into this coaching call. And in the meantime, lemme say that sentence again. Let's get into this coaching call where you're going to hear about a totally different reason behind a client ghosting. Well, we're never going to really know for sure what happened, but I think we got pretty close to determining the reason, and it was also a learning experience.
Speaker 2:
Okay, Eliza says, what do you do when a new client ghosts? Ah, what's going on, Eliza? How many sessions did they make it to?
Speaker 3:
One, they purchased a three session package showed up for the first session. I thought it went really well, but she's just disappeared.
Speaker 2:
So no, since you got off that call? Well
Speaker 3:
A few days after, I just sent her a message saying, Hey, don't forget to sign up for your next session. And by the way, I have the same time as the previous week available this week. And she's like, I've been sick. And I was like, oh, no problem. When you're feeling better let me know. And another week went by and then I sent her another message saying, Hey, I hope you're feeling better. Better. Don't forget. And one of the things, just to put this out there, I do these three session packages with a, you have 30 days to use them, so it's not like for the rest of your life, it's just 30 days. And so yeah, when I sent it, the second message, nothing completely ghosted. And I did send her another message yesterday or day before yesterday, just saying, well, cause I didn't want beg
Speaker 2:
What does that tell you?
Speaker 3:
Well, actually now I'm kind of worried about her
Speaker 2:
Right? I mean, the subject line I imagined did not say, did I do something to offend you? Right.
Speaker 3:
Well, it was just a text.
Speaker 2:
Oh, a text message. Oh, I see. Yeah, it was a text message. She didn't even see a text message.
Speaker 3:
No.
Speaker 2:
Ah, interesting. Okay. Well, what do we think Hive mind? She said she was sick. Did she give any indication of what kind of sick?
Speaker 3:
No.
Speaker 2:
There could be a surprising diagnosis or, you know what I mean? Sick could mean a cold. Sick could mean, oh yeah, for sure. So says, I think you've done all you can. Yeah. I was thinking when you said you had a 30 day limit that provides a perfect reason to, maybe if someone met with you in the first on day one of the 30 day period then you didn't hear back. Certainly maybe a week before it expires would be a good time to just remind them of that without pushing for them to necessarily schedule all their sessions. Anyone else? I'm interested in why you sent the email about, did I offend you? Is there something in your gut or itching? No,
Speaker 3:
I was actually just thinking that. I was thinking from that perspective, if I were on the other end of that and I were actually ghosting someone, something that would get me to just say, Hey, no, we're okay. What I mean, something a little more vulnerable and just, yeah, that was my thought process behind that.
Speaker 2:
Air out the issue if there was one, or get the confirmation or
Speaker 3:
Just get a response. Just get something that says, no, I, I've been busy or I've been still sick, or whatever. Anything, just something that says I'm still here.
Speaker 2:
Right. Well, I agree with Cindy. I don't think you need to do much more than that. And sometimes this just happens because the dog died or whatever priorities in life happen. But what I'm mostly concerned is if you felt something was wrong in that first session, because it wouldn't necessarily change what you do with this client, but it could be instructive for what you might do differently with another client. So I sure on that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, there was actually one thing when that we, I didn't know beforehand. I think that it's something that I need to be more, I need to ask more questions about going forward with any potential, any potential client or any new client. She came to me with the same issue, issue, and I'm not a health coach, I'm a relationship coach, but she came to me with the same relationship issue that she's having, that she's seeing a therapist for. And so she came to me and so we start talking and I'm giving her, I'm listening to her, and then I make a suggestion and she's like, oh, my therapist said I need to do this opposite thing. And I was just like, oh,
Speaker 2:
Has anyone else had that experience or somehow being pitted pit against another practitioner?
Speaker 4:
No,
Speaker 2:
That's uncomfortable.
Speaker 3:
It was very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:
Katie, I saw you took yourself off mute.
Speaker 4:
Oh no. I was going to say in the health coaching realm, I think it happens quite often with doctors. My doctor says this, my doctor says I have to stop eating all cholesterol. And it is really uncomfortable because as coaches, we don't have an expert hat on where helping people go on their own path, figure things out for themselves, take next step, helping them take action, whereas another practitioner does have that expert hat on. And I know in the comment when you posted this, where did it go? It said, how do you keep from letting that destroy your confidence when you're just starting out? And I think that when the expert says something and you're in a totally different place, definitely does open the door to that. And I think keeping in mind that what we do is different. What you do is different than what a therapist is doing.
And sometimes we have to explain that to our clients because they don't understand that they're just looking for help. And sometimes help is do this because otherwise things will get really, really bad. And sometimes help is, well, it's bad, but what do you think you can do next? What do you think is going to help you move forward? So there's different places where different clients are in. If someone comes to me as a health coach and they have an eating disorder and they weigh 79 pounds, and I'm trying to get them to experiment with food, and their doctor is like, you need to do this or you will die, I'm going to take a backseat and coach them through how to do that. So figuring out how you can work with that practitioner, asking her why do you think your therapist is asking you to take those steps?
Maybe she's told the therapist thing she hasn't told you, and then the therapist is coming from that place and you are not really coming from that place because you didn't have that information. So now you have additional information and you can say, great. Do you feel comfortable with what the therapist was doing is asking you to do? How can I help you do that? Because if they were feeling like they could do it themselves, they wouldn't have brought up that particular topic to ask you about it. So you can help them take action. And sometimes we do have to guide our clients in a direction that we are not 150% behind.
And that's okay because along the way, they might decide to change direction or maybe they don't. But we can find confidence, and I don't want to say take credit, but feel good about what we're doing. If we see our clients moving to a place that makes them happier, even if we think, oh my God, why do they want to do that? But look, they are taking that step. They are taking action and obviously they weren't taking action before or they wouldn't have paid you to help them take action. Going back to the confidence piece, your clients are going to do what your clients are going to do. If you put your value entirely behind them doing something, it's opening up the door for you to feel uncertain and on shaky ground a lot of the time, what you have to look at is, okay, how did I run that session?
Could I have done anything differently? Okay, maybe, but I'm still confident and I feel good about the choices that I made. And that's how we have to feel like we are doing well. As a coach, it's very different than if you're working in retail and they say, did you get here on time? Did you sell this many widgets? Did you interact with this many customers? And get them to scan that little QR code and say, you're amazing. It's really different as a coach, you have to find it of yourself. You have to take credit and you have to look for it. So I think that that's something as coaches that we need to do at every session. Okay, that's great. Or sometimes you leave and you're like, on this high, Michelle and I talked about this, like this buzz like, oh my God, that was an amazing coaching session. And you have to kind of break that down rather than just riding it, okay, what went well? Why am I feeling this way? And then you can pull that out in sessions where you don't get that high, I think. Yeah. Does that help? Thank you. I
Speaker 1:
Appreciate that. Yeah, very much.
Speaker 2:
I knew Katie would have so much good stuff to say about that. It was reminding me of when I've had clients that say, well, my doctor told me to do this, or My doctor told me it didn't matter what I ate. And I'm like, and then Well, what do you think about that? And let them tell you, I think my doctor's an idiot. And then, okay, well, what do you think might be the way that you want to go instead versus, well, this is what I think, Hey, I'm the coach. I'm going to tell you my opinion. You definitely got to stop eating gluten. You got Hashimotos
Speaker 1:
Interesting, wasn't it? I think it's so important to listen to our gut instinct around how a coaching call went. If this client did indeed show up again, and I'm not sure that she will, it might be beneficial for the coach to refer back to the conversation that they had about her therapist. She could ask, what did you decide to do about that situation? Did you take your therapist's advice and then just listen. Just see what the client has to say. Let the client say whether or not that advice was working for her. And if it is, fantastic, we're all in support of that. Or let the client be the one that says, you know what? It's not working and here's why. Or it's not working, and here's how I feel about it. And then there would be an opportunity as a coach to say, what might you want to try instead?
And maybe the coach and the client at that point could brainstorm options and the client could choose a path forward. This is what we mean when we say you want to let the client lead client led coaching. It creates better outcomes, and that's really important. And in this case, it may have been the difference between a client that's stuck around and a client who disappeared or who knows, maybe this client has simply hit a rough patch, got sick, is dealing with life and might reemerge later. That has happened in my practice too. So when clients walk away, and I'm absolutely certain this will happen to all of us at one point or another. Of course, you want to follow up of course, but you don't need to send more than one or two messages, and I don't recommend that you do follow up one more time and then you want to release that energy.
You want to let the client do what is right for them, even if that is ghosting. So we tend to put a lot of energy. I think we tend to put way too much like 90% of our energy into the client issues that aren't going well. I always have to remind myself of this. It's the clients that are doing great. It's the ones that you love and they love the experience of working with you and they're having great results. Those are the ones that you want to give your 90% to, and then just maybe 10% to the stuff that isn't working out so well. You want to water the grass where we want it to grow, right? Isn't that the same? If you're interested in learning more and practicing the art of client led coaching, make sure to grab my free coaching skills mini course. It's at healthcoachpower.com/skills. That's all for today. I'll be back next week.
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